This is our chance to end mass surveillance under the Patriot Act.

Call Congress Now

Urge them to end mass surveillance under the Patriot Act

What to say

Hi,

I’m one of your constituents, and I’m calling to urge you to end the NSA’s unconstitutional mass surveillance under the Patriot Act and vote no on S. 1035, a bill that would extend expiring portions of the Patriot Act until 2020.

NSA surveillance illegally invades my privacy, along with millions of other innocent people, without making me safer.

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Ending phone record surveillance is the first step to reining in surveillance abuses by the NSA. Please join us in making this the year we stand for privacy and liberty, not secrecy and fear.

Why you should care about phone record surveillance:

It violates the privacy of millions of innocent people. The NSA and FBI use Section 215 to collect the phone records of millions of people who have never even been suspected or accused of a crime.

It's unconstitutional and illegal. Section 215 of the Patriot Act was re-interpreted in complete secrecy to allow the surveillance of everyone without suspicion. One federal judge who ruled on the program’s legality after it was revealed to the public called it “beyond Orwellian” and “likely unconstitutional.”

It doesn’t make us any safer. The NSA has defended the phone metadata program by saying it has stopped terrorist attacks, but that claim has been repeatedly proven false. Even the White House’s own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has said, “We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which [bulk collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act] made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.”

For years, the United States government has been collecting every record of every phone call you make — when you call, whom you call, how long the call lasted, and how often you make those calls. This surveillance program affects hundreds of millions of regular people who have never done anything wrong, and it doesn’t matter if you’re calling your next-door neighbor or a family member halfway around the world.

This mass surveillance program could end in the next few weeks — but defenders of NSA spying are trying to stop that.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act is set to expire on June 1, 2015. NSA re-interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act in complete secrecy to allow them, with the help of the FBI, to collect millions of phone call records per day. The government could even try to use Section 215 for bulk collection of financial or other business records. Senator Mitch McConnell and Intelligence Committee Chair Senator Richard Burr have introduced S. 1035, a piece of legislation that would reauthorize three sections of the Patriot Act, including Section 215, through 2020. With your help, we can stop Congress from simply rubber-stamping this reauthorization — and stop this mass suspicionless surveillance program once and for all.

Use our phone tool to call Congress today. Tell Congress: Your time is up. Vote to end NSA mass surveillance. Then ask your friends to do the same.

What people have said about NSA surveillance

"Suspicionless surveillance has no place in a democracy. The next 60 days are a historic opportunity to rein in the NSA, but the only one who can end the worst of its abuses is you. Call your representatives and tell them that the unconstitutional 'bulk collection' of Americans' private records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act must end."

"The official start of the post-9/11 era assault on core civil liberties was the late 2001 enactment of the Patriot Act, regarded even then as a radical and dangerous erosion of constitutional protections. Though it has subsequently become normalized through years of bipartisan support and surpassed by even worse abuses which it enabled, it is still a serious menace to freedom, exploited by the U.S. government far beyond the realm of terrorism. We now have the best opportunity since its enactment to end it, and we should devote all of our energies to doing so."

"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval."

"Section 215 is unfortunately cloaked in secrecy. Some day that cloak will be lifted, and future generations will ask whether our actions today meet the test of a democratic society: transparency, accountability, and fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution."

"Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls . . . is no modest invasion of privacy. It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked."

"Mass surveillance by the NSA undermines the bedrock of our democracy and—as I argued in a debate with Glenn Greenwald against Alan Dershowitz and General Michael Hayden—it actually makes us less safe. Let's stop the phone record surveillance program and bring US law back in line with the Constitution."

"Limitless surveillance by law enforcement is an affront to our democratic values, is easily abused, and an ineffective use of resources. The forthcoming sunset of Section 215 could not come at a better time. Let's sieze the moment and advocate for a restoration of our privacy rights."